Editorial: Heroin crisis demands a better treatment system

Sunday

Jan 26, 2014 at 12:45 AM

For years, experts and officials have warned of an alarming increase in the abuse of prescription drugs. The worst of these are opioid-based painkillers like Oxycodone. Those drugs are highly addictive and relatively expensive, and many who get hooked on them gravitate to a cheaper substitute: heroin.Now there’s a new heroin epidemic, and this one isn’t limited to big cities. Heroin use has shot up in small cities in the Midwest and rural areas such as upstate New York. There are no big cities in Vermont, but Gov. Peter Shumlin devoted his recent State of the State address to the "full-blown heroin crisis" in his state.That the wave of heroin addiction has hit Massachusetts is reflected in a grim statistic:According to Trust for America’s Health, the number of drug overdose deaths in the Bay State has increased by 47 percent since 1999.State Senate President Therese Murray responded this month to the heroin crisis in her South Shore district and across the state by creating a special Senate committee to study addiction and treatment.The problems are already well-known. Treatment for substance abuse in Massachusetts has long been inadequate. While opiate addiction requires sustained treatment, cutbacks in what the state offers have created what Murray called a "revolving door" for addicts."What we’re finding is that as soon as people are detoxed, which has a physical component to it, they’re then released to go back to the communities from which they came," said Sen. Jennifer Flanagan, D-Leominster, who chairs the new committee. Back home, they find the same triggers that got them addicted in the first place, and detox alone doesn’t give them the tools to resist.The committee’s specific focus will be Section 35 of the state code, which allows addicts and their relatives to petition the courts to place them in 90-day treatment programs. But there aren’t nearly enough beds at licensed treatment facilities, which means many addicts are sent to prison instead: men to a prison in Bridgewater and women to MCI-Framingham. There, they are treated like prisoners, not like patients trying to escape a serious, chronic illness.What’s refreshing about Murray’s initiative, and Shumlin’s in Vermont, is that neither is looking to police and prisons and ever-tougher laws to stop the heroin epidemic. Harsh drug laws didn’t keep these young addicts out of their parents’ medicine cabinets or from buying heroin on the streets, and it won’t cure their addictions.Heroin addiction is not a criminal conspiracy; it’s a public health emergency. With the right resources, addiction can be beaten and lives saved. For Murray, who is required to step down from the Senate presidency at the end of this year, a more effective treatment system would be a proud legacy.